


Shadows on the Sun

by Linden



Series: Pockets [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fire Escapes in the City in the Summer, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-03 00:04:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4078987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Dean Winchester kissed his brother, he was twenty years old and in a sewer twelve feet below the Bronx, ankle-deep in fetid water with a thoroughly harpooned, thoroughly dead monster leaking blood and entrails at his feet.</p><p>Yeah.  He was pretty sure he couldn't have made that more awkward if he'd tried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this series is hijacked from Ruth Moody's lovely _Pockets_ , which frankly has "Winchesters" written all over it, and the title of this fic hails from her _We Could Pretend_.
> 
> Most of my fics adhere to roughly the same timeline, more or less; this series is ignoring at the very least the second of the _Four Winters_ , because first times are much too fun to write just once.
> 
> Feedback, as always, positive, negative, or anywhere in between, will be greeted with wild gratitude and possibly a parade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random bit of trivia for any fellow NYC urbex folks: Sam and Dean are near the junction of the Tibbets Brook tunnel and the mainline sewer below Broadway.

**August 1999**

**New York ******

The first time Dean Winchester kissed his brother, he was twenty years old and in a sewer twelve feet below the Bronx, ankle-deep in fetid water with a thoroughly harpooned, thoroughly dead monster leaking blood and entrails at his feet.

Yeah. Dean was pretty sure he couldn't have made that more awkward if he'd tried.

Not that he'd _been_ trying, mind you. But it had been seventeen hours--seven-fucking-teen--since the canny, clever fucker he and Sammy had been tracking through the undercity had gotten the jump on both of them and dragged his baby brother into the dark, and Dean was still flying high on panic and the adrenaline of the kill and the giddy, impossible relief of having found them, Sam tied up like a goddamn animal but alive and mostly unhurt and now bitching as Dean cut him loose about using an Orion flare in _enclosed spaces_ , Dean; are you trying to blind us, seriously; and what if there had been explosive gases; did you even check the air meter; do you even have the air meter; and Dean didn't think, just hauled him to his feet and pushed him back against the tunnel's rough brick wall and shut him up with his mouth, one hand fisted in the front of the kid's filthy tee and the other cradling the back of his stupid, precious head.

Like he said. Awkward. See also: not smooth.

***

They didn't talk about it, as they sloshed their way through rising water toward a tunnel heading east, and they didn't talk about it as they sloshed their way toward cleaner, colder air, and they didn't talk about it as they climbed out into the wet, lightning-lit dark maybe ten minutes later, filthy and soaked and stinking, and jogged southeast through the storm and Van Cortlandt Park until they got to the subway station, which was a fuck's sight farther than Dean had thought. They cleared the turnstile just before 2:30, slid through the train doors just before they closed. Dean was officially out of tokens, and also freakin' wet.

Rummaging through the waterproof sack he'd lifted a week ago, he found the last chocolate bar and can of Coke he had, handed them to Sam. Sam rolled his eyes and broke the bar in two, handed half back and refused half the soda, and they didn't talk about it then, either.

Their car had been empty when they'd gotten on, and the godawful stench still rising from both of them was enough to keep other night owls from boarding as they rumbled south toward Jack's. Sam drifted off against him somewhere around 174th St., lulled by the easy, incessant rocking of the train. Dean let him sleep. The kid was shaking, just a little, from cold or exhaustion or delayed shock setting in, and as Dean shifted to get an arm around him he wished, desperately, that he had a blanket to wrap him in, something to keep him warm.

Sam stirred, once, murmuring something incomprehensible against Dean's neck, and then sighed and tucked in closer, one bony hand creeping up to tangle in the soft cotton of his tee. Dean tipped his head tiredly against his brother's, Sam's wet hair silken-soft against his cheek, and watched the tunnel lights and station signs bleed by as the train sped and slowed and stopped, sped and slowed and stopped.

Two years. Two freakin' _years_ they'd been dancing around this humming, strumming thing between them; two years and he'd never missed a single step, not one, not ever. And now—

They hadn't talked about it. Dean was trying not to think about it. But he could feel, still, the warmth of his little brother's mouth, pressed against his in the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally failed at working this in to the story proper, but for maximum creepy factor, just be aware that in my brain Jack is one of the demons Lucifer sent to keep an eye on Sam.

Dean had never much liked Jack Magauren.

He was one of Caleb's most reliable contacts, a man who could get you what you needed, when you needed it, whether that was intel or a cheap bed or a holy relic or the sweet, sweet DefTech grenade launcher that was now stashed among their arsenal in their trunk. (Seriously. They had a _grenade launcher._ Sometimes, his life was awesome.) But Jack was also a sly, smarmy son of a bitch with a cat's eyes and a rat's smile, and the bills he charged for services rendered weren't always payable in cash. Still, Dean would say this for the bastard, all the same: he had brains enough to keep both his eyes and hands off of Sam, and when you showed up at his flophouse at four in the morning looking like you had, in fact, just killed something and crawled out of its sewer, all he did was roll his eyes at the mess.

'Well, if it ain't my lucky day,' he drawled, through the speak hole in the bulletproof window at his desk. Dean was fairly certain it was there not as a guard against neighborhood violence in general but against folks who wanted to do violence to Jack personally and in particular. He empathized. 'Not one but _two_ fuckin' delinquents tracking shit all over—' He paused, sniffed, scowled. 'Holy Christ you stink.' 

'Yeah, 's a real joy to see you, too, asshat,' Dean replied, wearily. Sam was only half-awake beside him; Dean had a hand fisted in the back of the kid's shirt to keep him on his feet. 'Where's our dad?'

'I can smell you _in here_ , Winchester.'

'Awesome. Why don't you tell us what room our dad's in, and then you can go back to smellin' somethin' else.'

'Johnny ain't here,' he said, and beneath the bone-deep exhaustion doing its best to numb both his brain and his body, Dean felt a sharp stab of worry in his gut, because their father had told them that he would be. 'Dropped some gear for you yesterday mornin', then lit outta here like his ass was on fire.' He rummaged in a drawer for a moment, pushed a battered key across the desk and through the tiny security panel in the glass. 'Four-seventeen's open, 'f you want it. Come through for your shit.'

He buzzed them through the door into his dinky little office, where a familiar green canvas bag was sitting in the corner. 'I'm chargin' you ten bucks for storage,' Jack was saying, as Dean propped Sam against the doorjamb and went in to grab it. 'I ain't a fuckin' luggage depot, you hear? Ten for the bag, twenty for the room. Cash, upfront, like always.' Jack let his eyes linger for a moment on Dean's mouth, then dropped them in a long, deliberate slide down his body and back up. 'Always glad to make other arrangements, a'course, 'f you ain't got the money just now.'

Dean wanted very badly to punch him in the throat.

He pulled his billfold from his back pocket instead, counted out three messy, soggy tens, and tossed them down onto the desk he'd let Jack give him a thorough fucking across three years ago, the price for a spell that had saved John's sight. 'Magauren,' he said, with a charming, chilly smile, 'I'd let half the city fuck me first,' and then he towed Sam out the door and up four flights of stairs and down a filthy narrow hall. He didn't bother with the light as they stumbled into their room; the dim, dim glow of the city spilling in through the broken blinds was enough for them to see by, and it's not like there was much to see. The place was dirty and cramped and had no furniture to speak of, save for a saggy double mattress that looked older than both him and Sam put together, but it was a safe place to sleep and there was an industrial shower in the corner, and Dean was too damn tired to care about much else. He locked the door at their backs, then nicked his hand with his pocket knife and slapped his bloody palm against the doorframe to wake the wards burned into the wood. He could feel the hum of them in his bones as they came alive.

Jack was a son of a bitch, and he always had been, but when it came to building a safe house, the man knew what he was doing.

The shower was nothing more than a wide pull-chain nozzle maybe seven feet above a drain in the linoleum floor, with neither a curtain nor a stall, but after their subterranean adventures it seemed like luxury, all the same. They left the lamp off as they stripped and scrubbed themselves clean with the pine tar soap from their bag, filth sluicing off in oil-dark suds, and if Dean could feel his little brother's eyes on him, and the hot prickly flush the attention raised beneath his own soap-slick skin, well—they weren't talking about that, either. He was tired enough by now that things were coming to him only in disconnected snatches of sight and sensation, anyway: the bruises across Sam's bony shoulder blades as he washed his brother's back; the dull glow of the wards; the sharp scent of their soap; the taste of iron in the water running into the corners of his open mouth, as he stood with his hands braced against the wall and head tipped forward beneath the bone-cold spray, shivering, alone. Wet and pink and stinging, he eventually roused himself enough to shut off the water and slide into a clean pair of boxers and brush his teeth at the small steel sink, and then he padded barefoot over to the mattress and face-planted onto it beside his brother, who was already collapsed in a sprawl of wet hair and skinny limbs and miles of cool damp skin.

He was three-quarters asleep, on his back maybe an inch from Sam in the grey glow of early, early morning, when: 'Dean?' Sam murmured.

He swallowed. He breathed. _Damn it._ 'Yeah Sammy.'

Silence for a moment. Then: ' . . . I think you killed a ninja turtle, man,' he said, and Dean's own tired, tired laughter followed him down into sleep. 

***

He was still tired a few hours later, when a deafening screech of tires on pavement and a chorus of horns half-woke him from sleep. He lifted a wrist to look at his watch, blearily; it was just past ten in the morning, entirely too early to be awake, and he let his hand drop to the mattress again with a quiet _thud_. Sam was curled against him in the curve of his other arm, head pillowed on his shoulder and one warm hand splayed open across his stomach. The kid was awake, clearly, his thumb rubbing gently back and forth across Dean's skin, but he didn't say anything, seemed content to just be lying quiet and close. Muddled with sleep, Dean was sore and stiff and aching, and with the morning sun slowly turning their room into a goddamned oven, he was also sweating like a whore in church, but for a moment all he was really aware of was how fucking _good_ it felt ( _goodperfectwrongpainfulSammySamSammy_ ) to have his little brother tucked up against him like this, six slim feet of familiar muscle and bone and scarred velvet skin, smelling of soap and sweat and home. The two of them didn't share a bed all that often anymore, hadn't since Sam was twelve and their father decided they were too old for it; but even before his feelings for his brother had gotten tangled all to hell, Dean had never stopped missing it, the closeness of it and the comfort, the tangible reminder that he wasn't alone. 

They weren't talking about it. But Sam's hand was drifting up toward his chest, long beautiful fingers fitting butterfly-light into the soft places between his ribs, stroking over his freckled skin, over his bruises, over his scars; and the fierce, possessive tenderness of it hurt Dean's heart and thickened his cock, all at once. He needed to tell the kid to knock it off, and he knew that, but it was just . . . he couldn't remember the last time someone had touched him like this, tentative, reverent, as though Dean were something . . . something cherished, somehow, something _important_ , and he wanted to hold onto the sweetness of it, selfishly, just for a little while.

Heat-mazed and weary, he listened to the hum of traffic and pedestrians drifting up from the street, the sound of construction down the block, the soft rise and fall of his brother's breath, and he never knew when he tumbled back down into sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

The next time he woke it was evening, and he needed to piss so badly that he could feel it in his back.

His muscles were aching like a bitch, and he sat up, wincing, gently (reluctantly) disentangling himself from his octopus-limbed baby brother as he went. Sammy made a soft, sad little noise and rolled into the space where he’d been, curled in on himself a little with a tiny frown line now between his brows. Dean sat at the edge of the mattress watching him for just a moment, quietly, then smoothed the kid's hair back off his pretty face, resolutely did not think about how much he wanted to lean down and kiss that pink, sleep-slack mouth, and left him to rest.

He felt marginally more human by the time he'd used the toilet and washed his hands and brushed his teeth and scraped three days worth of stubble from his face, and even better still after he ditched his sweaty boxers for his old rope sandals and older jeans and ancient tee and downed one of the bottles of no-name water in their bag. He climbed out the window and went down the fire escape into the alley, avoided the rats on his way to the street, and exchanged the last of his cash for two sodas and a pile of empanadas at the grungy food place on the corner, where the old woman at the counter smiled and called him _cariño_ and slipped two extra empanadas into his bag. 

He called Mateo at the payphone outside, with twenty-five of the forty-seven cents he had left to his name.

Sam was sitting out on the fire escape when Dean got back up to their window, maybe ten minutes later, reading on his back with bare feet kicked up on the lower rail. He'd pulled on a pair of jeans but hadn't bothered with a shirt, and Dean bit the inside of his cheek and looked away from him before he was tempted to do something stupid, like straddle his narrow hips and pin his hands to the sun-warmed landing and kiss him. Again. Properly this time.

Damn it.

'Hey,' he managed instead, and if his voice were rougher than usual, he had the acrid city air to blame. He cleared his throat. ‘How you feelin,’ huh?'

Sam rolled his head to look up at him. 'Pretty much like I got knocked unconscious yesterday and tied up in a sewer,' he said, wryly, and then shrugged. 'I'll live.' He put his book aside and made grabby hands toward the waxed bag Dean held. 'Mostly 'cause those smell awesome, man. Empanadas, yeah? What kind d'you get?'

Dean shrugged in return, handed the bag over as Sam sat up. 'Whatever they had. Potato and cheese, I think, and some kind of chicken.' The potato and cheese also had mushrooms, and the some-kind-of-chicken was ají de gallina, and Dean had chosen them from among four others because they were Sam's favorites, decided upon last summer when the kid had eaten his way through every possible kind of empanada in New Mexico. But it's not like he was about to admit that, so. He kicked his little brother lightly in the hip until the kid moved over to make room for him, and as he sat he popped the tops on their Cokes and handed one to Sam, and they tucked in to their supper as the day burned itself out in the sliver of sky overhead.

They ate quickly, both of them hungry, and then sat sipping at their sweating sodas with their backs to the old brick wall, watching the evening traffic rumbling by at their alley's end. The sunset was fading, slowly, light still lingering in the long summer dusk.

'You think Dad'll be back soon?' Sam asked after a little while. He'd tipped sideways a little against the wall, propping his shoulder against Dean's like a little kid. Dean could feel the heat of his skin where they touched, and the warm echo of it that was blooming somewhere behind his breastbone; he did his best to ignore both.

'Probably.' He swallowed the last of his Coke, reached up to balance the empty can on the rail beside him, leaned his head back against the wall. 'He would've left us a card if he were gonna be gone longer than a day or two, you know?' he said, with more confidence than he felt. John might have thought to leave them a card, but only if he'd remembered that Dean had given him his Visa after his own had been declined in a diner outside of Hartford, and their dad's track record for remembering shit like that wasn't all that awesome, really.

'We okay for money?' Sam asked, softly.

'Yeah.' He gave his brother's leg a quick pat. 'Yeah, we're fine, Sammy; don't worry about it, okay? I got it.'

Dean hoped he would leave it there, suspected he wouldn't. Sam said nothing for a moment, just sat up a little to study him in the shadowy light, then looked down at his hands and picked at the tab of his soda can with his thumb. Finally: 'You called Mateo, didn't you.'

Dean sometimes wondered what his life would be like if Sam were only about as half as clever as he actually was. Restful, he imagined. Really, really restful.

His brother snorted out a sharp, humorless laugh at his silence, shook his head. Tossed his soda can into the corner of the landing, where it hit with a clatter and rolled precariously toward the edge. 'I don't fucking believe you.'

'Sammy—

'A poltergeist concussed you a week ago,' he snapped. 'Dean, a poltergeist concussed you a week ago so badly you could not _remember my name_. Your ribs are a mess from the sewers and I don't—you're gonna get _hurt_ —

'I'm gonna get banged up a little and then have a couple hundred bucks to show for it. Mateo runs clean fights, Sammy; you know that--'

'There's nothing clean about letting him put you in a fucking cage!'

 _It's cleaner than lettin' someone else put me on my fuckin' knees,_ he wanted to reply, and bit his tongue instead and looked away from his brother, because Sam didn't know about the hooking, never had, and Dean was going to be damn sure it stayed that way, forever. 'Sam—'

'There's a reason fight clubs are illegal, Dean! That guy last time cracked your damn cheekbone before you—'

'Sam!' he barked, and his brother shut up, mutinous, soft mouth setting in a hard, unhappy line. Dean scrubbed a hand across his face. 'Look,' he said, wearily. 'Sammy, I got twenty-two cents in my pocket, and there is one bottle of water in our bag. That's all we got, okay? That is the _sum total_ of our fuckin' assets right now. Two pennies, two nickels, one shiny dime, and a bottle of water. I'm not lettin' you bunk down somewhere that ain't warded until Dad says it's okay, which means we are stayin' here and we gotta pay for it. And I'm assumin' you're gonna want to eat somethin' sometime tomorrow, yeah? This shit'—he tossed the empty empanada bag at him—'doesn't grow on trees. We need money. I don't have any cash to front for a hustle, I'm not riskin' either of us gettin' arrested for pickpocketin' stupid tourists, and Bobby and Jim are off the grid for another week, at least. Caleb might like us well enough to give us a beer now and again when we swing by, but he ain't gonna run out to Western Union. Rudy doesn't have any money, even if he wanted to send us some; Jefferson would laugh if we asked; as soon as Esther heard "Winchester" she'd hang up the phone; and the Avionis told Dad to lose their number three months ago. You got anybody else in your contacts list right now, man? 'Cause I don't. So. Tell me. Just what the fuck else do you suggest we do?'

Sam said nothing. Then: ' . . . we could eat at homeless shelters,' he muttered.

'No we really couldn't,' Dean said, because it was the truth, and the kid knew that. They'd eaten at plenty of them over the years when they'd needed to (and Dean still fondly remembered the one in Minneapolis, where a man who'd introduced himself as Randall had given them pieces of pumpkin _and_ apple pie at Thanksgiving), but without John sitting beside them, Sam still attracted well-meaning volunteers with CPS on speed-dial faster than a stray did fleas, and that was not a complication they needed this week. Also, _Hey, Dad, sorry; lost Sammy to foster care_ was not a message Dean ever planned on leaving on their father's phone. 'And even if we could, how are we gonna pay Jack for the room tomorrow, huh?' 

He looked at his little brother for a moment, who was looking down at his hands now, flushed and silent and unhappy. 'Sammy, we got no other options, all right? I'll be fine. It's—' He cupped a hand around the back of the kid's neck. 'Hey. Look at me, okay? It's easy money,' he said, though Sam's eyes stayed fixed stubbornly on his own lap. 'It's easy money, and it's good trainin', man, seriously. 'F I can't figure out how to take down some guy in a basement when I got a headache and sore ribs, the hell am I gonna do when I'm up against a werewolf, huh? You ever know one of those fuckers to stop and ask if we feel up to fightin'?' He gave him a gentle shake. 'Use that giant brain of yours, geek boy. You seriously think that some guys who work out in a gym and train in a ring a couple times a week are all of a sudden gonna get the drop on me?'

Sam shook his head, still not looking at him. Dean let his hand slide up into his brother's soft hair to tug his head up so that he could see his face. 'Then why are you bein' such a little bi—'

Sam made a low, helpless sound in his throat, and leaned forward, and kissed him. 

It was a hundred times softer than the way Dean had practically mauled the kid in the sewers, just a sip of a kiss, there and gone again at the very edge of his mouth before Dean ever really registered the tentative warmth of his brother's lips, and then Sam was blinking at him with those stupidly beautiful eyes, still close enough that his breath was ghosting warm over Dean's skin. 'Because, dumbass—' he said, before Dean caught him with his free hand splayed against his collarbone as he leaned in again, something in his own chest trembling, cracking, splitting _wide the fuck open_ , and—

'Sam,' was all he managed, before Sam fisted a hand in the front of his tee and threw a leg over his thighs and slid into his lap, six feet and a hundred sixty pounds of bone and muscle, heavy and graceless as a colt, long legs folding up to bracket Dean's hips.

'Don't you dare,' he said, fiercely. 'You _kissed_ me this morning, you son of a bitch; you don't get a take back. You want to know why I don't want you at Mateo's?' He ducked his head a little to kiss him again, close-lipped, just a warm crush of his soft pretty mouth against Dean's, utterly unpracticed, and the clumsy sweetness of it hit Dean with all the force of an iron fist below his heart. Because if he wasn't the first person his little brother had ever kissed, he was damn near, and the possessive heat of that thought lit him up inside like a goddamned bonfire, smoked through his bones between one breath and the next and left two years of restraint and guilt and worry and defenses and what Dean had always optimistically called his common sense smoking in tidy piles of ash. He slid his hand up the long line of Sam's neck to cradle his jaw, tilted his head a little to fit their mouths together more easily, caught his little brother's lower lip gently between both of his, and sipped at it, just a little, teased the very edge of it with his tongue. _Sam._ He felt something sweet and sudden shudder through Sam's body, felt his brother shift to wrap his arms around him, broke away just a little to catch a breath. _Sammy._ Sam chased after his mouth, eager and shy at once, and Dean let him catch it, let him kiss him, smoothed a thumb along his cheekbone as he showed him how. Sammy was as quick a study with his mouth as he'd ever been with anything else, and the kid had been able to knot a cherry stem with his tongue since he'd been nine, besides; it didn't take him long to find the rhythm of it, the nip of teeth and the wet slippery slide of tongues, and it knocked something loose inside of Dean, made him feel hopelessly unmoored and utterly grounded all at once, because Sam was kissing him like he _knew_ him, knew him and wanted him anyway, knew him and loved him anyway, and Dean couldn't remember the last time he'd kissed someone who'd even known his real name.

He was dizzy by the time his brother pulled away, just a little. Sam tipped his forehead against Dean's, and a heartbeat later Dean was hit with a sense memory of Sammy at five years old, all big clear eyes and pudgy little limbs, snuggling into his lap like this whenever he wanted attention or comfort or had a secret to tell; and it should have shocked him, he thought, dimly, should have shocked sense and _family_ and _no_ right the hell back into him, but all it did was add an edge of tenderness to the heat running beneath his skin. He let his hands slide down the ladder of Sam's ribs, palmed the sharp bones of his hips, tugged him in flush against him, both of them hard in their jeans, and Jesus, Dean wanted him on a bed (not that crap mattress, a _bed_ , cool and clean) where he could spread him out, spread him open, find out exactly how he liked to be kissed, how he liked to be touched.

'Because you're mine,' Sam whispered, voice shaking, and it took Dean a minute to remember he'd been in the middle of asking a question when Sam had first kissed him. 'You're _mine_ , Dean, and no one gets to hurt you; they don't get to put their hands on you; not for money; it's not—I don't—' He nipped at his mouth. 'You're worth more than that,' he whispered. 'You're worth so much fucking more than that, and I don't—Dean—'

Dean kissed him to shut him up. And kept kissing him for awhile, since that seemed to be working for both of them, as the night settled down around them and the city.

They still weren't talking about it.

Dean was pretty sure that they didn't need to.

It was summer, when everything seemed possible, when all chances seemed worth taking, and his blood was singing to the steady beat of _Sam, Sam, Sam_.


End file.
